The present invention relates to buses and more particularly, to high speed differential data buses.
Many applications comprise a driver circuit that produces a logic high or a logic low at its output which is to be transmitted over a differential bus, which is typically a data bus, an address bus or an arbitration bus, and will be received at the other end of the bus by a receiver circuit. Furthermore, the differential bus may be coupled to more than one driver circuit which can cause problems when one driver forces the inverting bus line to a logic high and another driver forces the non-inverting bus line to a logic high also. Therefore, the receiver circuit attempts to receive a logic high-high differential signal which typically produces oscillation in the receiver. In addition, standard driver circuits usually are capable of driving both of its outputs to a logic low thereby effectively disabling the driver circuit from the differential bus. This logic low-low condition on both the inverting and non-inverting lines also causes oscillation in the receiver and requires excess power consumption from the driver.
Thus, a need exists for a differential bus that provides true differential signals at all times and, thus, abating the occurrence of a logic high-high arbitration problem or a low-low disabled state.